Monthly Archive

Now that I have 64 entries spread out over three years, they’re starting to stack up a bit, and it seems like it would be hard for a newcomer to wade through them all, even with a Blog Table of Contents. So I thought I’d do a quick list of my ten favorite posts.

(This list doesn’t include the excerpts from my book that I’ve posted. For those, go to the book’s online Table of Contents, which has links to all of them.)

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Yoga, Concerts, Prison (August 2009)
In which I’m hit once again by the insane cognitive dissonance of Palestine — so much fun and beauty, and so much pointless pain

Beer Fest in Palestine
Oktoberfest 2009 at a gorgeous Palestinian Christian village called Taybeh, which brews Palestine’s delicious golden beer

Olives and Rabbis
Israelis and Palestinians work together to harvest olives in the fall of 2009, and I make some new friends

Photo Essay — Last Days in Palestine 2009
It’s always hard to leave Palestine. Hopefully some of these pictures and stories will help explain why. But it was time to head home, finish my book, move to New York, and find a publisher

And the world is getting fed up with the Obama Administration’s fecklessness and inaction. More and more countries are recognizing a Palestinian state, and the Palestinians are looking for more ways to bypass the US and Israel, both of which are hopelessly intransigent toward the wishes and conscience of the rest of the world.

But so far there haven’t been any front-page shake-ups or spikes in violence (just the usual Israeli turkey shoot of Gaza civilians, which is so horrific it makes one numb — the latest being the bombing and killings of five young sisters as they slept in their home).

I’m in talks with a publisher now, hoping for a spring 2011 release and book tour.

Finishing it provoked a feeling that’s difficult to describe. And of course it’s not completely done — I’m sure my editor and I will come up with some final tweaks. But after three years, to have something so close to final form — to feel I’ve done everything I can do, and the rest will be up to a collaboration with a professional… Well, intellectually it feels great. But as for the visceral aspect, what I feel is… hollow. Like some great part of myself has been extracted. Nothing else has really sunk in.

Perhaps when I actually see the book as a physical object, I will feel the way I expected to feel from the first: like a proud mother.

Thanks to all of you for helping me through this. I couldn’t have done it alone.